


Rise (From the Ashes)

by DustySoul



Category: Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Canon Disabled Character, Character Study, F/F, Family, Female Character of Color, Female-Centric, Kid Fic, LGBTQ Character of Color, Lesbian Character of Color, Mental Illness, Other, POV Character of Color, POV Female Character, POV First Person, Podfic & Podficced Works, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Snapshots, Unconventional Families, Unconventional Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-12 22:55:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3358355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustySoul/pseuds/DustySoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The running from every planet in the galaxy? Kidnapping the emperor? The coup d'état? Ha! That was all just the beginning.</p><p>Winter narrates some snapshots of life after queen Lavana has been overthrown.</p><p>(First three chapters can stand on their own)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ashes, Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> To clarify the poly relationship. Winter and Cinder have a romantic / sexual relationship. Cinder has a romantic / sexual relationship with Kai. Winter and Kai are friends, and not particularly close friends at that.
> 
> Podfic now available at  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/4064353

127 T.E.  
 _Ashes, ashes we all fall down!_

Kai doesn’t sleep. Exhaustion is etched into his face. He never smiles. Except in that bitter sweet way. Like he wants to, but can’t quite twist his lips right. Can’t quite feel the moment, the joy.

He’s drawn into himself. Even holding his children he grows somber and distant, holding their chubby hands, staring into the chubby faces.

He sees shadows out of the corner of his eyes. I think he can hear them scream. Can smell the burning - leaves trails of blood and ashes when he walks the castle’s hall.

We wonder together in silence. We’ll watch earth out the big bay windows, see our reflections in the newly installed glass.

I don’t know which side of the quarantine he wishes he was on.

All we see of earth is out the window or on the net screens. They’ve stopped burying the bodies. They just burn everything now. Personal effects, everything. In huge pits, massive, unmarked graves.

They don’t even bother to collect the ashes, there’s no way to tell who’s who. All the earthens get when their loved ones die is a single black rose. And a ping. An automated, depersonalized, messaged, “A world has ended. A place in your heart gone dark and void - forever.”

  
Cinder rubs at her face when she speaks, “It’s mutating. The vaccine Lavana created, it just… it doesn’t work like it used to.” She means it doesn’t work at all anymore. Her eyes are perpetually red. No one else seems to notice.

There are outbreaks on Luna. There are riots, too. The people are angry. They have been for a long time.

And everything smells like burning. When it’s ash, not blood staining my feet, I curl up in Cinder’s bed. She brushes back my hair and murmurs nonsense until I fade to sleep.

I remind myself she’s here. She’s alive.  _She’s not the one burning anymore._


	2. Rain, rain go away

131 T.E.  
_Rain, rain, go away,_  
_come again another day._

 

I walk the halls around dusk. I don’t know how the hallucinations work. Since the surgery (just a small thing, off the record) they haven’t gotten any worse. The doctor, he said I wouldn’t be able to use my gift. I haven’t tried.

The blood’s mostly dried now and I can almost tell it’s not really there. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t have to think my way through it anymore. I know in the place of knowing. In a place so deep it transcends thought and logic. _I just know_.

Apparently the medication’s supposed to make them go away completely. A seam or two ooze. Ash billow in through the closed window, spirals in the corner, caught in some air current.

The wall is gritty and cold against my fingertips. Red dust clings to my skin. It’s nice. To do this. To accept it.  To just... Just...

To breathe.

  


One of the doors is ajar and orange light pools in the corridor. I glide toward it, my stride just as slow, purposeful, _peaceful_. It’s one of the libraries. The holographic fire crackles. I know it is fake like I know the walls don’t bleed and there is no ash on Luna. Do other people find it convincing?

Cinder sleeps in one of the arm chairs, a book resting on her rounding belly. I lean against the door frame and soak up the scene. The tension’s drained from her in slumber. She doesn’t look so harsh. It’s almost impossible to tell that the earth and the moon rest upon her shoulders.

“You have a beautiful smile.” Cinder’s eyes are  barely open and her own mouth is turned up at the corners.

I step into the room, “It’s nice to see you like this.”

Cinder beckons. “Like what?” she asks.

I sit on her foot stool, stare into the fake flames, “...content ... Unburdened.”

I look back at Cinder, something in her eyes has gone soft. She leans forward so that tout faces were only a few inches apart. I tilt my head, part my lips. Cinder kisses me, soft, gentle, closed-mouth pecks. Her breath ghosts across my check.

Something in my chest unwinds. It feels like freedom. It bubbles inside me. I can feel myself smiling.

I rest my forehead against Cinder’s, bring a hand up to cup the back of her neck.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you like this in a long time.”

I hum.

“So… unguarded. Scarlet tells me about how you were, before. So…”

“Childish?”

“Optimistic.” Cinder ghosts a hand over my back, “I worry I bring out the worst in you.”

I let out a huff of air, it was almost a laugh. It almost cracked. I slump, bow my head, remembering those days with Scarlet. How helpless I felt. How helpless I knew she must feel.

“I worry I’ve broken you.” Cinder whispers. So tender, infinitely tender, “That, the events of the last few years, broke you.”

“I prayed for it.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It’s hollow and distant in my ears, “I knew what had to happen. What I wanted, desperately to happen. It’s how I could be so ‘optimistic’."

“Everything about my circumstance weighed just has heavy on me then. I tried to make the best of it.” I lick my suddenly dry lips, “I couldn’t change it, so prayed and prayed that change would come anyway.”

I draw in a breath, ragged in my throat and lungs, “You haven’t broken me.” (I promise.)

Cinder pulls me against her.

 


	3. Star Light, Star Bright

131 T.E.  
_Star light, star bright_

Kai paces his office, talking to his adviser in a low tenor that lulls me into contentment. The quarantine will be lifted tomorrow. Letumosis as run its course, leaving around a trillion people dead. Without a vaccine it can’t be wiped out completely, but a variety of specialist (doctors, scientists, statisticians) agree that travel between the Earthen Kingdoms and between Earth and Luna is safe now. That all Letumosis has in store for the future are the small and sporadic outbreaks which have infected Luna over the past four years.

Cinder runs her fingers through my hair. I open my eyes, humming softly.

“Do you want to visit earth?” She whispers.

I really have to think about that. Earth. It’s always seemed like such a distant, abstract thing. _Earth_.

“In what capacity?” I ask, remembering one of the few factoids about earth culture I know. They’re (mostly, aggressively) monogamous.

Cinder’s hand stills in my hair, “The Earthens know Rika isn’t biologically Kai’s.”

“But they’d rather she was.”

Cinder nods.

“I don’t know.” I answer, “I’ve never really thought about Earth before, not like that.”

“Well, think about it. And…” Cinder hesitates. Kai’s stopped talking in the other room, stands in the doorway. “We were talking,” She gestures to Kai, “And we think you should name the baby.”

“ _Me?_ ” my voice a sharp whisper.

“You.” Kai says.

I… I don’t know what to think about this. Kai… I never thought he’d agree… to this, this, officially recognizing… “Yes.” My eyes sting and I can’t quite catch my breath. “Yes, yes, thank you.”

He clasps my hand, before slipping into the other side of the bed, throwing an arm around Cinder.

“I love you.” She says, kissing me on the cheek.

“I love you, too.”


	4. Chapter 4

Quick notes for the children I imagine existing in the verse:

Cinder adopts the first Shell born after she takes the thrown as a way to help end the stigma against them and make sure they have a place in government.

Pearl and Rika are bi-parental twins. (And you can't tell me that Luna wouldn't think that's super, super damn lucky. Anyway, I have all these head cannons about the loudest voice against Cinder's rule is her perceived infertility because cyborg and so she purposefully proves that wrong. She also changes the way the thrown works so that it doesn't have to stay in a bloodline, hence the adoptions.)

Solstice is the name Winter picks out for Cinder's fourth child.

I was working on writing a really jargon filled document about the political changes and how the sort of democracy was going to work but I figured no one gave a shit. This is complete as it is and maybe, without it looming over me, I'll find a way to work these details into a next part and finish figuring out how to right a Lunar legal speech for a document that completely changes how government works without officially over throwing it. I'm not actually that much of a history buff so it's cool in theory, not so much in practice.

Anyway, this as been complete for a long time except for the notes above that I couldn't figure out how to work in but that I know are interesting to people.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to message or follow me on tumblr at dusty-soul.tumblr.com


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